Hi I was looking to purchase wines from 2014 and 2017 to age for 20 years as a gift. Was hoping to get a white, a red and a champagne or sparkling. I was looking for advice on best value for dollar spent as I would like to be price conscious in the overall purchase.

My initial thoughts as I am located in Canada was to get in touch with US vineyards (California). If anyone can offer any advice or direction on particular wines/vineyards they recommend.

If anyone has been through this process and can share their experience it would be helpful.

Everyone's given you good advice, Kenneth, without actually explaining why it's not so easy to give you the advice you're seeking. Can't tell from your post what your wine experience is, so we don't know if you realize how expensive high end (any wine that ages for 20 years is high-end) California wines are relative to your threshhold for "value conscious" (mine and yours might not be the same). The red part is the easiest, as there are a number of California wines that have proven track records for the kind of life span you seek, and some of those have already been mentioned, like Ridge Montebello. Thing is, those wines are around $200/bottle. Whites and sparklers are a much much bigger problem. California's getting warmer every year and it has never been a California goal to make chardonnays that can cellar for 20 years. Even if they could, it's just not profitable. Ditto bubblies.

And that's why people are mentioning German rieslings. Riesling is a proven ageable white grape and the Germans do it better than anyone. For sparkling, you need France's champagne region, not California. But again, 20 year lifespans? It would have to be a vintage bottling--that's why '14-'17s won't be out for awhile as someone said--and a top producer from a great vintage (if any of the current vintages are going to be considered 'great') is going to cost you.

You may have thought that if you concentrate just on California that would give you something like one-stop shopping that would ease your burden in buying out of Canada or getting around the usual LCB issues. Unfortunately, not really. What you can get will depend a lot on who you buy it from and each of us sitting here naming brands won't really help because your options will be limited to what's available to whoever your seller is.

Are you in BC, Ontario or somewhere in between? And will the wines be shipped to Canada? If you're in B.C., you may know that import duty is pretty steep.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov